CAPE CANAVERAL - The team
at Kennedy Space Center is confident Discovery and Atlantis will be ready in
time to launch the return-to-flight mission in July as planned, NASA officials
told community leaders at a breakfast Friday.

"It's been a pretty
tough 2 1/2 years," said Michael Wetmore, the Merritt Island man who heads
shuttle processing at the space center. "We're now very confident that
light at the end of the tunnel is not a train."

Discovery, set to fly the
first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster, is at the launch pad
with five extra days in the schedule between now and the first available launch
date, July 13.

Discovery could fly any
time between that day and July 31.

Atlantis, which will be on
standby, ready to fly a rescue mission during Discovery's flight, is scheduled
to roll to the Vehicle Assembly Building around July 19.

Wetmore said that's early
enough to support a rushed flight to the International Space Station in the
event Discovery is crippled and the astronauts become stranded at the orbiting
outpost.

"None of us expect to
ever use that contingency, but we're going to be ready just in case,"
Wetmore said.

The processing of the two
vehicles, which has involved more than 6 million work hours, is unlikely now to
cause a delay unless something unexpected comes up, Wetmore said.

A final engineering review
of the NASA's debris analysis is set for Friday at Kennedy Space Center.

Top managers, including
Administrator Mike Griffin, will be here to review whether the last remaining
debris sources pose an unacceptable risk that would prevent launching in July
as planned.

NASA has stressed it can't
eliminate all debris.

The agency focused on the
most dangerous debris sources to prevent a repeat of the Columbia disaster,
where a piece of insulating foam came off the external fuel tank and blasted a
fatal hole in the heat shield.

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